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Advice: A less hectic workday for my D&D characters
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7403320" data-attributes="member: 20564"><p>Unfortunately, that's a commonly spread misconception.</p><p></p><p>The DMG suggest 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests, about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the day. (DMG pg 84.) Just having harder encounters doesn't balance because of durations. An easy example is the barbarian - starting at 2 rages a day, they are supposed to be able to rage 1/4 to 1/3 of the encounters. With 1-2 encounters per day they would always be able to rage - you'd need to scale it back to one rage every two or three days to hit the same balance point.</p><p></p><p>Look at spells. If encounters are fewer, any "all encounter" buffs will be great, and you're casting then 1-2 instead of 6-8 times. If encounters are harder because of mroe foes, area effect can often hit more and be a lot more effective. If combats are harder because of more dangerous opponents, then debuffs/crowd control can make a huge impact - and because of one 1/3 of the saves are proficient it will still be easy to find spells that will affect them even if they are tougher.</p><p></p><p>Fewer, harder encounters changes the balance dramatically vs. the expected amount. It's far from an unplayable balance, but it makes some classes a lot better, especially full casters, and makes other classes relatively weaker, like those that are primarily at-will (weapons, etc.)</p><p></p><p>A better solution is to scale back on your rests so that you can have the recommended number of encounters between them. The DMG has a Gritty Realism variant (pg 267) that makes a short rest 8 hours, and a long rest 7 days. So you can have 2 encounters per day and a short rest, and long rests only between adventures.</p><p></p><p>The 5e Adventures in Middle Earth do something like this for journeys - you only get short rests during a journey, unless you go to a sanctuary like Elrond's Halfway House.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue, post: 7403320, member: 20564"] Unfortunately, that's a commonly spread misconception. The DMG suggest 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests, about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the day. (DMG pg 84.) Just having harder encounters doesn't balance because of durations. An easy example is the barbarian - starting at 2 rages a day, they are supposed to be able to rage 1/4 to 1/3 of the encounters. With 1-2 encounters per day they would always be able to rage - you'd need to scale it back to one rage every two or three days to hit the same balance point. Look at spells. If encounters are fewer, any "all encounter" buffs will be great, and you're casting then 1-2 instead of 6-8 times. If encounters are harder because of mroe foes, area effect can often hit more and be a lot more effective. If combats are harder because of more dangerous opponents, then debuffs/crowd control can make a huge impact - and because of one 1/3 of the saves are proficient it will still be easy to find spells that will affect them even if they are tougher. Fewer, harder encounters changes the balance dramatically vs. the expected amount. It's far from an unplayable balance, but it makes some classes a lot better, especially full casters, and makes other classes relatively weaker, like those that are primarily at-will (weapons, etc.) A better solution is to scale back on your rests so that you can have the recommended number of encounters between them. The DMG has a Gritty Realism variant (pg 267) that makes a short rest 8 hours, and a long rest 7 days. So you can have 2 encounters per day and a short rest, and long rests only between adventures. The 5e Adventures in Middle Earth do something like this for journeys - you only get short rests during a journey, unless you go to a sanctuary like Elrond's Halfway House. [/QUOTE]
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